Dave "The Dragon" Lockwood and his tournament-tested sons, Max, 16, Jon, 13, and Ben, 10, of Silver Spring, Md., might become to competitive tiddlywinks what the Manning family of quarterbacks is to football, according to a January Washington Post story. Dave was previously ranked No. 1 in the English Tiddlywinks Association (and is currently No. 8, with Max No. 52). "Tiddlywinks doesn't sound very serious," said Max, but "(t)here's so much strategy." (For the uninformed: You mash a "squidger" down on a "wink" to propel it either into the "pot" or to "squop" it onto an opponent's wink to temporarily disable it.) Dave said he plans to get Britain's Prince Philip, a winker, to suggest tiddlywinks as a demonstration "sport" at London's 2012 Summer Olympics.

-- In November, the military ruler of Myanmar, Gen. Than Shwe, ordered his entire government to immediately pack up and move from Rangoon to a new capital 200 miles away in the small town of Pyinmana, based on dire warnings from his astrologer (though the move had been long-rumored). (Myanmar/Burma has a history with astrology and numerology, and in fact, democracy activists purposely commenced their most propitious demonstrations on Aug. 8, 1988, at 8:08 a.m.) Shwe was just named the world's third-worst dictator by Parade magazine.

-- The traditional Norwegian dish of smalahove is smoked sheep's head with all parts except the skull itself counted as delicacies. Especially tasty are the eyes, said a restaurateur quoted in a November Agence France-Presse dispatch from Voss, Norway, since they are the most-used muscles in the face: "(Eye) just melts on the tongue." A visiting Englishman, served eyes, lips, tongue and ears, remarked that it is "a bit of a visual challenge, but the meat is very good."

-- Recent News About the Scottish Meal That Melts on the Tongue: In September in Bethlehem, Pa., the annual haggis-eating contest was won by Darren Lucey of Brooklyn, N.Y. (1-1/2 pounds in 2 minutes), but the only female entrant, slow-eating Joanne Shaver, said she competed only to get the free haggis, which she loves. (Haggis is sheep stomach stuffed with tongue, heart, liver, oats and onions, best served at the enticing color of gray.)

-- In January, an Anglican church vicar in Cambridge, England, commenced twice-monthly services for goths (with black garments and rock music) at his St. Edward King and Martyr church. Vicar Martin Ramshaw, 34, said he is a goth himself and reports that his dozen or so worshippers go straight from services to a goth nightclub. (He will soon issue goth T-shirts with Jesus speaking, "If the world hates you, remember, it hated me first.") And in Waco, Texas, in January, in another congregation-building move, Catholic Monsignor Isidore Rozycki, attending a gala opening, blessed the city's new Hooters restaurant.

-- Evangelical Christian minister Rob Schenck and two colleagues entered a U.S. Senate hearing room the day before the January confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and daubed each seat with "holy oil" to bless the proceedings, saying that things had gone well when they had done the same thing for Chief Justice Roberts' hearings. "God ... is interested in what goes on" there, Rev. Schenck told a Wall Street Journal reporter.

-- Illinois Sentencing Guidelines: (1) Judges in Springfield, Ill., twice failed to order jail time in November for Jason Holman, 27, for the two latest of his 185 traffic tickets, opting merely for what amounted to probation. (2) After a Jacksonville, Ill., judge, in September, gave Oscar Cushionberry, 49, three years in jail for a probation violation, the prosecutor praised the judge for finally sending Cushionberry "a message that, at some point in time, you run out of options," that one only gets "so many chances at probation." In the past 10 years, Cushionberry has 93 arrests and 29 convictions (including some felonies).

-- The University of Florida announced in January it would provide health care and other benefits to domestic partners of their employees, provided the employee certifies that the pair are having sex (specifically, having a "non-platonic" relationship). A University human resources official said such a pledge is "increasingly standard" in domestic-partner programs, even though married couples are not required to certify that they actually have sex.

(1) Hunter Raybon E. Upton was tracked down and rescued by his worried wife near Mount Holly, Ark., in December, after he spent almost nine hours hanging upside down from branches following his entanglement in his tree stand. He was hospitalized with hypothermia and required surgery. (2) A fire rescue officer had to pull Australian Robin Toom, 38, out of a commercial washing machine in Townsville, Queensland, in January after he got stuck while playing hide-and-seek with his kids.

(1) In a Washington, D.C., pedestrian tragedy in December, prominent urban designer Charles Atherton, 73, was fatally struck down by a driver, but then when paramedics arrived, they discovered that D.C. police had already been there and had issued Atherton a $5 jaywalking ticket. (2) In December, a special committee of the D.C. Council, seeking to move the annual Martin Luther King Day parade from January to a warmer date, chose "April 1." (Committee members later said they never realized that that was April Fool's Day.) (3) The Washington Post found in December that the D.C. medical examiner's backlog of autopsies stood at 1,038, including 84 homicides more than a year old.

Techno Wizards: (1) Boris Alvarado, 31, was arrested in September and charged with violating his Texas probation for a 2004 conviction for soliciting an underage girl online for sex. Alvarado made it easy for investigators because he was still using the same screen name he had used in 2004. (2) Ten people were arrested on counterfeiting charges in Phoenix in November, helped along when two of them brought a computer printer to a shop for repair, and technicians found it clogged with counterfeit money. [Press release of Attorney General of Texas, 9-20-05] [Arizona Republic, 11-15-05]

(1) The bestiality count News of the Weird reported in October against mortgage broker Brendan McMahon in Sydney, Australia, was dropped in November, but McMahon is still charged with abusing rabbits in other ways. A court psychiatrist said McMahon probably genuinely believed he was helping the rabbits. (2) Former Oklahoma district judge Donald Thompson was finally scheduled for arraignment in January, 12 months after he was charged with indecency for allegedly using a noisy masturbation aid under his robes during trials and other court business. An additional count was recently filed based on a court reporter's statement that she saw him shaving his pubic hair during a trial.

Twice recently came news reports of people attempting suicide by sticking their heads in toilets: a 23-year-old woman being held in Chicago for three murders and using her cell's toilet (unsuccessful), and a man being held on a murder charge in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., in December (successful, in that his head lodged in the toilet during flushing). And in Belmont, N.H., in January, a suicidal man was successful with his elaborate, homemade guillotine, although the blade merely left a gash in his neck, causing him to slowly bleed to death. (He also had wired fire bombs to burn down the house as he died, but he apparently forgot to flip the electrical trigger before the guillotine came down.)

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

Ms. Sierra Stiles, age 8, was credited with the first bear kill in Maryland in the limited October hunting season, downing a 211-pounder from 50 yards away with her .243-caliber rifle. (She had won one of the lottery-awarded permits and then aced the safety test.) And according to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer profile in January, Aidan Gold, age 8, of Bothell, Wash., recently climbed a 20,300-foot peak on Mount Everest in the Himalayas with his dad, adding to his previous climbs in the Cascades and the Alps. Aidan said the last part of the Everest climb (a 45-degree stretch of rock and ice) was "the (hardest) 3,000 feet I've ever done."

-- Katie's Pet Depot in La Verne, Calif., is one of the few grooming salons in the country for rats, according to an October Associated Press report. A special $10 treatment includes lustrous-coat shampooing, claw-clipping and flea and mite treatment, and employee Karri Garrison said the claw-clipping is the hardest: "They have very small feet."

-- Opportunities in Toilet Paper: (1) Rev. Rick Oliver of the First Church of God in Pendleton, Ore., decided last fall that the church's new fund-raising campaign would involve sales of toilet paper, specifically the upscale brand Angel Soft. (2) The Portuguese paper producer Renova introduced black toilet paper in France last fall (and expect to introduce it in the U.S. soon). A Renova statement called the tissue "elegant, rebellious, alternative and eternally fashionable."

-- In October in Louisburg, Kan., and January in Eau Claire, Wis., cats went missing after hiding behind drywall being installed in houses, eventually getting sealed in. The unnamed Kansas cat was in for three weeks before workers returned and heard an intrawall shuffling noise, and "Mary Poppins" in Wisconsin moved between walls and ceiling for five days before homeowners tracked her down with thermal imaging equipment.

-- China's Xinhua news agency reported in October that Ai Ai, the veteran chimp at the safari park in Shaanxi province, who is 27 years old and who started smoking cigarette butts at age 11 when her first mate died, has finally kicked her nicotine habit. Zoo officials attributed her success to distractions such as exercise, music (via a Walkman "borrowed" from a keeper), and better food, such as fried dishes and dumplings.

-- Pigs Fighting for Respect: Pigs' personalities are distributed much like humans', according to patiently observant British researcher Niamh O'Connell (interviewed for a November story in London's Daily Telegraph). Except for the largest ones, pigs are of two types: pushy ones that always fight for food and choice sleeping space, and meek ones that avoid confrontations. According to O'Connell, the aggressive ones have higher stress levels and make poorer parents, and besides, they ultimately lose out when they challenge the alpha pigs.

(1) Mike Bolognue opened what he believes is the only alcohol-free "sports bar" in America, in Plain Township, Ohio, near Akron. It was unintentional. He had already invested $560,000 in the bar before he realized that it was located in a dry district. (However, voters can un-dry the district on a ballot question in May.) (2) And in December, a typist for the Japanese bank Mizuho Securities hit the wrong keys and sold about 600,000 shares of an expensive stock that Mizuho owned only 1 share of, making the firm liable for the equivalent of more than $225 million. (The Tokyo Stock Exchange pressured some company buyers to cancel their purchases, but individuals got to sell their purchases back to Mizuho at a huge profit.)

(1) In a company employee style manual issued in late 2005 by Commonwealth Bank in Queensland state in Australia, workers were advised with great specificity how to groom themselves and practice good hygiene. Among the areas covered were proper brands of underwear, shapes for women's eyebrows, and frequency for shaving and for moisturizing one's hands. (In December, a Commonwealth executive issued an "if" apology, i.e., an apology "if" the bank had offended anyone.) (2) In October, Tony Price, managing director of the British firm WStore UK, reportedly threatened to give each of his 80 employees first a DNA test, and then when reaction to that went poorly, a lie detector test, after he accidentally got someone's discarded chewing gum on his trousers.

(1) Lucella Bridget Gorman pleaded guilty in Brisbane, Australia, in December to two counts of theft, the first count for stealing things from a department store and the second count for stealing the mugshot camera while police were booking her for the department-store theft. (2) FEMA subcontractor Frank Tanner, 47, was charged with looting in Slidell, La., in January after he walked out the front door of Darin LeBlanc's home with an armful of electronic equipment. LeBlanc was standing in his front yard at the time, but Tanner, in the hubbub surrounding cleanup efforts, apparently thought LeBlanc was just another contractor.

-- Selina Valdez, 28, was arrested in January and her suspected partner, Daniel Marquez, 41, was sought by police, on counterfeiting charges in Pueblo, Colo., after police walked into their foul-smelling home. No hoarded animals were present, but according to police, about a week before the arrest, officers had called on the couple, who had then hurriedly flushed the bogus bills down the toilet. After questioning them, police left, but the toilet clogged, and since then, the couple have been relieving themselves into plastic bags that police found strewn about the home.

-- Readers' Choice: Jessica Sandy Booth, 18, was arrested in December in Memphis, Tenn., and charged with hiring a hit man to help her kill four people so she could steal a brick of what turned out to be queso fresco cheese. According to police, Booth had seen the large block of crumbly, white, Mexican-cuisine cheese on a table at an acquaintance's home, thought it was a big pile of cocaine, and devised an elaborate plot to return later, steal it, and kill anyone in the house old enough to testify against her.

Arrested recently and awaiting trial for murder: Jeremy Wayne Hopkins, 22 (Denton, Texas, November); Reginald Wayne Thomas, 23 (Houston, November); Matthew Wayne Almand, 18 (Melbourne, Fla., November); John Wayne Surratt Jr., 28 (Stanly County, N.C., December; escaped and recaptured, January); Curtis Wayne Campbell, 25 (Norman, Okla., January). Convicted of murder: Roy Wayne Russell, 45 (Vancouver, Wash., January). Sentenced for murder: Douglas Wayne Pepper, 44 (Greensboro, N.C., November). Executed for murder: Melvin Wayne White, 55 (Huntsville, Texas, November). Committed Suicide While Suspected of Murder: Don Wayne Moody, 26 (Laredo, Texas, December).

In 2003, News of the Weird reported on the grand design of Bill Martin to build a Christian-themed nudist park, Natura, in Florida's Pasco County (already the home of five nudist camps). (He argues that nakedness is more Christianlike than the expensive, garish clothes worn by worshipers at mega-churches' Sunday galas.) Martin plans to open later in 2006, despite legal challenges such as the one over the frank guidelines on Natura's Web site. Perhaps the most controversial is an essay reassuring men and boys that spontaneous erections seldom occur and should not discourage them from visiting. Though Christian organizations, and even the more staid nudist organizations, have objected to Martin's candor, he stood fast: "Erections," he said, "have got to be addressed."

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

Even with the nation at war and casualties mounting, some Pentagon officials evidently believe that one way to reduce military families' stress is to teach them to laugh. Its "laughter instructor," retired Army Col. James Scott, holds therapeutic sessions around the country with National Guard families that feature walking like a penguin and blurting "ha ha hee hee and ho ho," according to a January USA Today story. Said Scott, "The guiding principle is to laugh for no reason (which is) one of the reasons it works so well for military families."

-- After her 11-year-old son was suspended for twice bringing a loaded handgun to school, Linnea C. Holdren, 43, said the matter was pretty much beyond her control. "I can't lock up his guns," she told police. "They belong to him, and he has a right to use them whenever he wants to use them." (The boy was expelled in January, and Holdren, who is a teacher at her son's Shickshinny, Pa., elementary school, has been charged with felony endangerment.)

-- Denmark's government ruled in 2001 that institutionalized citizens have the right to have sex and that caregivers must even take them to visit prostitutes. (Prostitution is legal in Denmark.) According to a January dispatch from Aarhus, Denmark, in London's Observer, Mr. Torben Vegener Hansen, 59, who has cerebral palsy and lives at home on government assistance, is challenging the government also to pay for prostitutes to make house calls, claiming that he is unable to have sex manually because of his illness and must be accorded this "human right" by a service similar to the government's meals-on-wheels program.

-- Scotland Yard agreed in January to pay the equivalent of about $52,000 to London police Sgt. Leslie Turner to settle Turner's claim that the reason he failed in a 2004 assignment was that he had been "overpromoted" to the job because he is black. Turner said he had been given a job as a guard for Prince Charles, and then for Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, without adequate training and, as a result, made mistakes that caused him to be reassigned.

-- Two physicians, in a December note in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, wrote glowingly of the ability of the Super Soaker Max-D 5000 squirt weapon to quickly and safely loosen severely impacted ear wax (knowledge learned from an emergency use when no standard ear-syringing equipment was available). In fact, they wrote, since the Super Soaker holds much more water than the standard equipment, using it would actually shorten patients' office visits. (However, the Super Soaker was obviously not anticipated for medical use; its awkward design assured that patient and doctor would be drenched by excess spray.)

-- "The Island of Dr. Moreau" Comes to Life: (1) Recently opened archives in Moscow show that in the 1920s, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered his top animal breeding scientist to create interspecies "super warriors." Stalin's half-men, half-apes would be "invincible," "insensitive to pain" and "indifferent about the quality of food they eat." (2) The Associated Press reported in October that Japan's Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., in the course of video-game research, is developing a joystick-controlled headset that disorients humans and makes them move in certain ways (a benign "virtual dance experience," according to one researcher, with potential uses such as keeping the elderly from falling).

-- Researchers for Finland's Helsinki University of Technology's Air Guitar Project recently demonstrated software that allows a player's finger movements along the imaginary instrument to be set to music from a library of guitar sounds. According to a November New Scientist report, the virtual guitar hero wears special gloves, allowing his gestures to be tracked by camera. Researcher Aki Kanerva expects players even to develop a distinct air guitar style.

Researcher Jean-Louis Martin of the Universite Claude Bernard in Lyon, France, found (for a December British Medical Journal article) that consuming cannabis (marijuana) doubled motorists' likelihood of a fatal auto collision, and alarming news headlines about the report followed. Less prominently noted in the article, and consequently in news reports, was that drivers impaired by alcohol were six times more likely than an unimpaired driver to have a fatal collision, thus suggesting that the generally illegal drug, cannabis, is only one-third as dangerous for drivers as the legal drug, alcohol.

In January, a parrot named Greeny inherited a half-million-dollar property in Boulder County, Colo., through an elaborate trust fund after its owners, Patricia Borosik, 49, and (a man with essentially four first names) Paul James Stewart Scott, 54, committed suicide. If Scott had lived a few more days, he would have had to report to court to be sentenced for offering $13,000 to two underage girls to have sex with him and then to asphyxiate him with a pillow.

Not Cut Out for a Life of Crime: (1) Three men who police say stole a car in San Jose, Calif., in October and drove it to Chico, Calif., were arrested in Chico when police caught them trying to break into that same car because they had locked the keys inside (or thought they had, since Chico Officer Jose Lara said he found the keys in one of the men's pockets, after all). (2) Adam Ruiz, 29, was arrested in Buffalo, N.Y., in January after he showed up at work as a trainee at the same Burger King he had allegedly robbed the week before (strengthening the conclusion that crime certainly does not pay if it pays less well than burger-flipping.)

More Courtroom Defendants Employing Ridiculous Legal Theories: Gregory Ignatius Armstrong, 42, was indicted for bankruptcy fraud in Greenbelt, Md., in December for claiming in all seriousness that he is a sovereign nation with unlimited contract powers and is thus owed $500,000 in copyright royalties by anyone who uses his name (in one case, by his Postal Service supervisor who wrote him concerning absences from work). And Oliver Clifton Hudson and Gregory Banks refused to attend their federal drug-conspiracy trial in Baltimore in November because they deny that the government has jurisdiction over their "flesh and blood." Hudson, for example, said the indictment against him was void because it listed his name in all capital letters, when the correct designation is "Oliver Clifton: Hudson."

Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (75) People who are so enticed by the money they can make selling scrap-metal copper that they break into electrical substations to steal wire, at night, and touch the wrong thing, as the man did in Bellmead, Texas, two days before Christmas. (He "never even knew what hit him," said a utility employee.) (76) And animals in mating season (especially deer) that crash into homes and storefronts in their crazed search for sex, as did deer that appeared in January in an Evansville, Ind., video store and an Arkansas City, Kan., elementary school.

A Saratoga Springs, N.Y., telemarketer perhaps saved the life of an 85-year-old man in Ridott, Ill., in December when she happened to dial his number. The man had fallen the night before and spent the night outside freezing. Suffering from hypothermia, he had struggled to crawl back inside, and, although still unable to make an outgoing call, he managed to pick up the ringing phone and ask for help.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)